This week’s episode seems to have been a game-changer. I say “seems to have been,” because there are a lot of events on Medium that I think are going to reverberate throughout the season, but are then forgotten about. However, the blow up between Allison and Lee is a pretty big deal and I can’t see how it won’t be addressed next week.
Poor Lee is having a bit of a delayed reaction to his brother’s death, and it’s affecting him in some not-so-good ways. Not only can’t he sleep, but he’s been driven to beat the ever-loving shit out of a local abusive deadbeat. While that doesn’t sound all that bad, it is important to realize that Lee is still a cop, and kicking a guy in the face in front of his wife and kids is frowned upon — regardless of whether or not he may have deserved it.
What I found most interesting about this episode though, is where Allison the moral relativist decided to draw the line with Lee. She wasn’t thrilled with him beating the shit out of that guy, but she still agreed to testify for him at his hearing. However, once Lee went to the guy’s house and threatened his wife, that was too much.
It’s certainly not difficult to see where Allison was coming from on that one: threatening an abused woman with jail time and the prospect of leaving her son with his abusive father doesn’t really allow anyone to give Lee the benefit of the doubt and say he was just defending those who are unable to defend themselves.
However, it was his assertion of “the ends justify the means” that really seemed to get under Allison’s skin; something I find interesting, considering that that’s the philosophy under which she operates most of the time. Even just last week, that kind of justice was totally cool with her. But regardless, it is not cool in this situation. So what’s going to happen to her and Lee? If they don’t have a friendship any longer, that changes the whole dynamic of the show. Who’s going to be Allison’s ally inside the police department?
The Dubois children are all getting storylines pretty regularly this season, which is always nice to see. Ariel’s getting ready to go off to college, so she’s starting to do all of those college-y things like find out about her first roommate, and start making terrible financial decisions (Yeah Ariel, trusting a stranger to pay your car insurance is a fantastic idea. There’s no way that can come back to bite you on the ass!). Unfortunately for Ariel, she’s a Dubois, so even finding out about her college roommate is horrifying, or at least more horrifying than usual.
Ariel’s roommate of course turns out to be a dead girl who leads her to her murderer and a current kidnapper. I liked this storyline, but was kind of disappointed at the ending. I figured that Ariels’ roommate and the missing girl were probably abducted by the same guy, but it would have been nice for us to have seen that instead of the dude just saying, “11 years ago I totally murdered some chick in Texas.” It seemed like a little bit of a cop-out.
Everything that happened in this episode really made me start wondering if season 7 is going to be Medium’s last. Is the Allison/Lee fight setting him up for an exit? With Ariel going to school across the country, we probably won’t be seeing much of her either. After fighting for so long, is Medium finally ready to shut off the lights?
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Oct 10, 2010 @ 21:38 EST5EDT
